Chapter One: Lame CSI One Work, Day One

Remedy glanced around the crime lab, a smile forming on her lips. This was it. This, after all the wait, was her first day as a criminalist. She looked at her ID. Remedy McGuire, Las Vegas Crime Lab, CSI Level One. The picture was far from flattering, but most ID pictures were worse, so she was just glad to have something that was at least pride-worthy. She walked down the hall, looking for Dr. Gil Grissom's office. Apparently, she was already starting in on an investigation with another CSI one, Greg Sanders a CSI two, Sara Sidle. She wondered who they were and what they were like...and if they wondered what she was like. She looked at the door in front of her. It looked a little dark in there, but she assumed that was the way Dr. Gil Grissom liked it.

She knocked on the door and opened it a little. "Excuse me..." she spoke meekly. "Is...Dr. Gil Grissom here?" she asked, peeking into the room, seeing a woman who looking a little older than she, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Standing next to her was an older man, with sandy blonde hair which was peppered with gray, blue eyes, glasses and a little of a scruffy beard on his face. "Uh...I'm Remedy McGuire..." she half introduced herself to the two new faces. "The...new criminalist?"
The man stood up and smiled at her. "Hi, Remedy. I'm Gil Grissom...and you can call me Grissom. This is Sara Sidle. We've been waiting for you. And Sara is going to take you to your scene...but I have a triple murder to go to...Sara, can you brief Remedy on the robbery on your way?" he asked with a smile.
Detective Sidle smiled and nodded, waving to Grissom as he left. "Of course...everyone but me, you and Greg gets the fun case..."

Remedy laughed and shrugged, turning back from her wave at Grissom as he left. "We're lowly CSI ones and twos, what do you expect? The CSI threes get to have all the fun..." she grinned.
Detective Sidle smiled and looked to Remedy. "They always leave the robberies to the CSI ones...and once in awhile me. Maybe they'll give me a good case every once in a blue moon, but of course all the CSI threes get to work the good cases...with all the gore and stuff..." she laughed a little and looked around. "What do you say I brief you on the way? This office gives me the creeps..."
Remedy laughed again and nodded. "Entomology is cool...I wanted to pick that up, but I already had a full course load at UNH. Entomology would have sent me off the edge. I assume Grissom is an entomologist, right?" she raised an eyebrow, hoping the insect displays weren't just for kicks.

Detective Sidle nodded. "Yeah, he's a forensic entomologist...it's weird because when he sees a bug, the scene is usually automatically his. He almost figured out a case with pupa casings once...but the bugs were off, so he had to go on regular judgement..." she explained with a shrug, as they got into her black Chevy Tahoe.
Remedy nodded and sighed. "So...who else is around here, Detective Sidle? Like, I know everyone's names and CSI levels, but I don't know what they're like. Like...is Grissom as freaky as his office shows that he is?" she asked Detective Sidle with a slight wink.
Detective Sidle laughed and nodded, as they headed toward the casino that had just been robbed. "Yeah, but he's a really good guy. He's nice...and he's smart, and funny...and...yeah. Call me Sara by the way..."
Remedy's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Sara...are you and Grissom a...thing?" she grinned and winked. "I mean, are you dating?" she asked.

Sara bit her lower lip and nodded coyly. "We've been dating and stuff for the past few months now...he's an amazing person and I mean...you know?"
Remedy didn't need to hear more. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I remember I had a really big thing for my forensic pathology professor sophomore year at UNH, and we dated for like two months, but he told me that it couldn't work because I was his student..." she looked to Sara's nervous face. "But I know that won't happen with you and Grissom. You're older, and plus, he was cheating on someone with me..."
Sara raised an eyebrow. "I went through that with an EMT this past year. I didn't know until I was investigating a scene and his girlfriend was involved. I felt like crap..." she looked out the window, away from Remedy. "But, what about you, Remedy? What was yours like?" she asked.

Remedy shrugged and shook her head. "I was just...eh, I was enamoured and then he told me that he was seeing someone, and I was only an on the side girl. Call me Remi, by the way..." she grinned. "So...what about the others? What is Catherine Willows like?"
Sara smiled and turned a corner. "Catherine is really cool. She's kind of a mother figure to us all. She's great to have around, because she's always willing to talk and to listen and everything. Like, when my EMT boyfriend and I broke up, she was there and she was great to have around..." she shrugged.
Remi smiled and nodded. "What about Nick Stokes? I heard he's a hottie..." she grinned wryly and looked around at the group of people standing outside a casino. "Is he, like, the resident eye-candy?"
Sara shrugged and laughed a little. "Depending on who you are. Catherine made him her own personal eye-candy, so you know...it's kind of hard to look at him now without Catherine wanting to kill you..." she winked.

Remi let out a slight laugh and looked into the back seat at the CSI kits. "Okay...so...what about Warrick Brown and Christi Davis?" she asked, as they came up to another black Tahoe, parked beside an empty space.
Sara parked the car and spoke as they got out to go to the scene. "Yeah, they're really laid back about their jobs. It's good to have some more liberal people around, though. You know, Grissom is conservative enough for a whole army of CSI's, so it takes all Nick, Warrick, Cath, Christi and I have in us to chill him out a bit."
Remi grinned and looked over to Sara. "I'm sure you do a mighty fine job of that yourself, am I right, Sara?" she clicked her teeth and smiled.
Sara scoffed but let off a slight nod. "You bet your ass I do..." she winked and got out of the car.

Remi thought back to what Grissom had told her over the phone. "Okay...so, there's one more person that I'm forgetting...uh...something that begins with a G..." she racked her brain for the name of the other CSI one. "Greg maybe?" she recalled.
Sara nodded and smiled. "You'll find out about him in just a minute. He's working this scene with us. He was the youngest criminalist before you came..." she opened the door to the casino and led Remi inside. "He's definitely an original. That's for sure..."
An original...Remi repeated in her head. "Good, it'll take an original to get used to my personality..." she half-kidded with Sara. "So...what's the deal with this case? Is it just a robbery or is it a homicide, too?" she asked, hopeful for a body to look at.
Sara was still processing the personality comment. Great, another Greg. JUST what we need...she thought as they approached the scene. "It's just a 416. They got away with a wad of cash, but that's about it. No one got hurt, except maybe the criminal...he lost a little blood."

Remi sighed and shook her head. "We get all the boring stuff. Oh well. At least I'm working in the field I want to be working in. So...where's the scene?" she looked around at the crowd of people.
Sara led her to an elevator. "Way down on the bottom floor...let's go..." she pushed the button and went down in the elevator. "Greg's checking everything out...seeing if the robber left anything behind about himself."
Remi peered through the elevator doors as it came to a stop, to see a police officer standing beside a gorgeous looking guy. If this was Greg, she was impressed. He was mildly tall, about six inches taller than her five-four. He had brown eyes, messy brown hair, and a air of carelessness in his style. It was incredible. "Hey...Sara, is that Greg?" she asked, pointing to the gorgeous guy.
Sara nodded and grinned at the look on Remi's face. She could tell right away that Remi was interested in Greg. All she and Catherine had to do was be sure they spent a lot of time together. "Yeah, that's Greg. A real piece of work, isn't he?" she asked.
Remi nodded in agreement. That's for sure...and I'd like to thank the angel that worked him into being...she grinned as they headed toward Greg. "Yeah...that he is..."

Sara looked at Greg as they got closer. "Hey Greggo, this is Remedy McGuire...the new criminalist..." she introduced the two CSI ones. "I briefed her on the scene, so why don't we just get working?"
Greg raised his eyes from the paper he was holding, and looked at Remi for the first time. A long lost smile spread across his face. She had long, shiny, dark brown hair, sparkling hazel eyes and dazzling, glossed pink lips. "Sure, just a sec. Hey, Remedy. I'm Greg Sanders..." he held out his hand for her to shake.
Remi returned his smile and held her hand out. "Call me Remi, please..." she told him as they shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Greg..." she introduced herself.
Sara watched them for a second, but had to break up the introduction. "Come on, guys..." she called their attention from one another. "We have a scene to investigate..."

Remi followed Sara to the safe that was broken into. "So, have you guys figured out what was used to break into this or not?" she asked, checking the safe over.
Greg shook his head and looked at the safe. "We figure it must have been something pretty high powered to cut through so clean...but we don't know what it is..." he explained.
Sara looked it over. "So far, we think it was like the bank robbery...but we're not exactly sure as of now..." she explained. "Why, do you have a hunch?"
Remi nodded and walked up to the safe. "I don't think we're dealing with the brightest bulbs in the box. See that dark line right there?" she asked, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves and pointing along a line. "I think they tried to use a blow torch or something hot to break through it. But then they realized that it wasn't all that successful, since these safes are at least eight inches thick..." she pointed down to the burned sides of the safe. "So they brought out the heavy artillery..."

Sara understood what Remi was getting at. "C4...yeah, I see your point. So...Greg, did you get any shoe prints from the floor or any fingerprints from the safe?" she asked Greg.
Greg nodded and showed Sara the print that he lifted from the safe. "I got a shoe print too. It looks to be about a size nine in men's..." he explained.
Sara took the fingerprint and shoe print from Greg. "Why don't I bring this back to the lab and run the shoe print, and see if Jaqui can get a match on the fingerprint, and then I'll come back and tell you guys what I find, okay?" she looked to Remi and Greg.
Greg reached into his kit and pulled out a used swab. "Here...bring this to Hodges, see if he can find out what it is. I swabbed it from the shoe print after I lifted it..." he explained as he handed Sara the swab.
Sara nodded and turned to leave. "I'll beep you if I find anything out that needs to stay in the lab, okay? Later guys..." she left Greg and Remi to investigate the scene.

Remi glanced over to Greg, then looked away. "So, do you guys have anyone that you're looking at as a suspect?" she asked with a shrug, as she turned back to look at the safe.
Greg shook his head and looked in the other direction. "Nope. We just started looking at this a couple hours before Grissom paged Sara to come pick you up, so...so far we're as in the dark as you..."
She looked closer at the safe and blinked. "Hey, is this blood?" she asked him, without taking her attention from the safe. "Or am I just losing it?"
He turned around and walked over next to her, taking out his flashlight to shed a little more light on the dark corner of the room. Looking closely at the substance that Remi was looking at, he saw the texture and color. "Yeah, it's blood. Let's swab this up and bring it back to the lab. I don't think there's much else to see here...maybe we can find a suspect with this..."

Remi could have hit herself in the head. She realized as Greg loomed over her shoulder that she'd left her kit in Sara's car. How was she supposed to tell Greg that she didn't have her kit without looking like an idiot. "Uh, can you get me a swab?" she asked, in hopes that Greg wouldn't notice.
He knew, though, what was going on. "Sure...and don't worry. I won't tell anyone that you forgot your kit. Here..." he handed her a cotton swab and allowed her to get the blood from the safe.
She blushed and flashed Greg a smile. "Thanks...I owe you big time..." she bit her lower lip, sort of embarrassed. "I just want to make a good impression..."
He wondered how she could be nervous, after coming in and seeing two things that both he and Sara had missed, so quickly. "I don't think you have anything to worry about. It takes an awesome CSI to come in and automatically know that C4 was used, and then see blood where two other CSI's have missed it," he flashed her a reassuring smile. "So, I'm almost a hundred percent sure that Grissom will be impressed..."

She smiled as they headed to Greg's black Kia Spectra. "Thanks..." she could tell that there was going to be a strong friendship developing between she and Greg Sanders. Something about him told her that he was someone she would get close to, and eventually start becoming friends with. He had a comforting air about him, and she was already becoming interested...